Meeting Food Traceability Compliance with Warehouse Technology

The FDA announced plans to push back the compliance deadline for new food traceability guidelines, officially known as the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), by 30 months past the original January 2026 deadline. That means if you haven’t already been preparing, you get a bit of a reprieve. But what should you be working on to ensure compliance?

To start, FSMA is a significant change for foodservice and grocery warehouses, shifting the focus from reacting to contamination to proactively preventing it. With stricter traceability, sanitation, and handling requirements, compliance isn’t just about avoiding penalties, but rather, ensuring food safety and maintaining customer trust.

One of the most significant changes is the need for enhanced tracking and traceability of food products, ensuring that warehouses can quickly identify and isolate potentially contaminated items. A critical aspect of FSMA compliance is minimizing the risk of cross-contamination, particularly in warehouses that handle allergens, fresh produce, and temperature-sensitive goods. Proper segregation, inventory rotation, and workflow optimization help mitigate this risk. Finally, FSMA emphasizes the importance of faster recalls and audits, requiring distribution centers to maintain accurate, real-time records that allow them to quickly trace products throughout the supply chain. By improving data visibility, food distributors can respond swiftly to potential safety concerns, reducing waste, liability, and risk to public health.

As FSMA regulations continue to evolve, investing in the right technology solutions can help foodservice and grocery DCs stay compliant while improving efficiency.

Lack of visibility could put you at risk

To prepare for FSMA Rule 204, foodservice and grocery distribution centers must take proactive steps to ensure compliance and streamline operations. The first step is to familiarize yourself with Critical Tracking Events (CTEs) and understand the Key Data Elements (KDEs) you are required to track and store based on your specific role in the supply chain. These elements vary depending on whether you are a supplier, distributor, or retailer, but they all contribute to improving traceability and food safety. Having a clear understanding of what needs to be recorded will help you build a solid foundation for compliance.

Once you identify the necessary KDEs, it’s essential to ensure they are captured and stored in a way that is easily accessible. This means implementing digital solutions that allow quick retrieval of data for audits, recalls, and quality assurance checks. Additionally, standardizing labeling practices across all suppliers will play a critical role in traceability efforts. Harmonizing labels and adopting those that align with Produce Traceability Initiative (PTI) standards can improve consistency and reduce errors when tracking food products. Finally, vetting traceability solutions is key to finding the right technology for your needs. As you evaluate different systems, consider the features that will be most beneficial such as real-time tracking, automated data collection, and seamless integration with your warehouse management system.

Multi-modal solutions offer a path to success

For food warehouses and distribution centers navigating the complex compliance landscape of FSMA, multi-modal picking solutions provide a powerful advantage. By combining technologies such as voice-directed picking, barcode scanning, RFID, and vision systems, these solutions enable accurate, real-time case- and item-level tracking. Every scan and confirmation are automatically logged, creating a complete audit trail that simplifies traceability and strengthens lot and batch control—critical components of FSMA compliance. Additionally, multi-modal systems can validate product data like expiration dates, lot numbers, and product codes at the point of pick, ensuring accuracy without sacrificing speed.

Beyond traceability, multi-modal solutions help reduce human error and enhance food safety by automating checks and providing immediate feedback to associates. Their flexibility allows warehouses to seamlessly adapt to varying product handling needs while supporting key FSMA requirements. Combined with automated data capture and compliance reporting capabilities, multi-modal solutions offer a clear path to maintaining both operational efficiency and regulatory readiness.

For example, voice-directed optimization solutions allow pickers to enter lot, date and other product level data (catchweight, etc.) at the point of pick using speech recognition, scanning, or even a keypad. In many foodservice DCs, lot numbers on many products are printed only in a human readable code, so selectors need other means to enter the data. If barcodes are available, scanning is far quicker than voice, but if the lot or date code is not scannable, voice entry is both more accurate and efficient than a keypad (especially in a cooler or freezer). In general, scanning catchweights is faster than voice (and it is far faster and more accurate than key entry), so having the ability to use voice and scanning together is a big win. It provides data capture efficiency and accuracy.

It is equally important that this scanning capability supports the GS1 Foodservice standards. DCs using this system can capture and read GS1 barcodes (including batch/lot numbers and dates) at the point of pick without making any changes to their picking system.

Meeting the requirements of FSMA Rule 204 may seem like a daunting task, but with the right technology in place, compliance can be streamlined while also improving overall warehouse efficiency. Solutions like voice-directed picking help ensure accuracy and hygiene by reducing unnecessary product handling, while advanced optimization software enhances traceability, inventory management, and real-time data access. By implementing smart labeling, automated tracking, and AI-driven workflows, foodservice and grocery distribution centers can not only meet FSMA’s stricter standards but also strengthen their operational resilience. Even with the recent extension, the deadline will be here before you know it, so now is the time to assess your current processes and invest in the right digital tools to safeguard food safety, protect your brand, and maintain customer trust. Are you ready to embrace the future of food safety?